This is my personal blog. I was Branch Secretary of Lambeth UNISON from 1992 to 2017 and a member of the National Executive Council (NEC) of UNISON, the public service union (www.unison.org.uk) from 2003 to 2017.
I am Chair of Brighton Pavilion Constituency Labour Party and of the Sussex Labour Representation Committee (LRC).
Neither the Labour Party nor UNISON is responsible for the contents of this personal blog. (Nor is my employer!)

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Tuesday, September 30, 2014

It has been suggested to me that individual members of UNISON’s National Executive Council really ought not to go sticking our noses into “service group” issues such as the current local government pay dispute. So I'll consider that.

This observation has, however, given me pause for thought as I now realise I made a serious mistake in my assessment of the proposals made by the national employers. When I suggested that there was nothing good about them I was clearly wrong – and I’m not above owning up to a mistake.

The proposals are very good indeed – for the employers. As they put it themselves “this package would have increased the national pay bill by £151,798,061; a saving of £12,857,978 (or 7.81%) in the current financial year, compared to the existing pay offer that the Employers made on 20 March.”

That’s right.

GMB and UNITE national officials wanted to call off strike action and consult their members on a revised offer which they and the employers knew was cheaper for the employers than the 1% offer. Only the common sense of the majority of UNISON’s National Joint Council (NJC) Committee averted this disaster.

Because – make no mistake – every single person who says that their priority is to consult members on this (non) “offer” is either a fool or a liar. Everyone knows that if the industrial action is called off it won’t start again and we will be doomed to accept whatever remains on the table.

Since I have already commentedin relation to the GMB I would like to take this opportunity to call out comrades in the United Left in UNITE to justify the conduct of their officials – what are you playing at?

Two things will now happen. At one level, every faint-heart and charlatan in our movement will be hoping that a majority of delegates to the UNISON NJC Committee meeting on Thursday 9 October can be cajoled, bamboozled or intimidated into suspending strike action in order to consult on proposals to which we ought to be responding by placing the officials who helped develop them into a capability procedure.

Meanwhile at the grass roots we need to step up preparations for the strike action on 14 October – that is the second (and more important) thing that has to happen. Activists need to order more strike materials and get them into the hands of our members, organise picket lines and strike day activity and do all that we can to mobilise our members for the most effective action we can possibly deliver.

It has been
suggested to me that individual members of UNISON’s National Executive Council
really ought not to go sticking our noses into “service group” issues such as
the current local government pay dispute. So I'll consider that.

This
observation has, however, given me pause for thought as I now realise I made a serious
mistake in my assessment of the proposals made by the national employers. When
I suggested that there was nothing good about them I was clearly wrong – and I’m
not above owning up to a mistake.

The
proposals are very good indeed – for the employers. As they put it themselves “this package would have increased the
national pay bill by £151,798,061; a saving of £12,857,978 (or 7.81%) in the
current financial year, compared to the existing pay offer that the Employers
made on 20 March.”

That’s right.

GMB and
UNITE national officials wanted to call off strike action and consult their
members on a revised offer which they and the employers knew was cheaper for the employers than the 1%
offer. Only the common sense of the majority of UNISON’s National Joint Council
(NJC) Committee averted this disaster.

Because –
make no mistake – every single person who says that their priority is to
consult members on this (non) “offer” is either a fool or a liar. Everyone
knows that if the industrial action is called off it won’t start again and we
will be doomed to accept whatever remains on the table.

Since I have
already commented
in relation to the GMB I would like to take this opportunity to call out
comrades in the United Left in UNITE to
justify the conduct of their officials – what are you playing at?

Two things
will now happen. At one level, every faint-heart and charlatan in our movement
will be hoping that a majority of delegates to the UNISON NJC Committee meeting
on Thursday 9 October can be cajoled, bamboozled or intimidated into suspending
strike action in order to consult on proposals to which we ought to be
responding by placing the officials who helped develop them into a capability
procedure.

Meanwhile at
the grass roots we need to step up preparations for the strike action on 14
October – that is the second (and more important) thing that has to happen.
Activists need to order more strike materials and get them into the hands of
our members, organise picket lines and strike day activity and do all that we
can to mobilise our members for the most effective action we can possibly
deliver.

Monday, September 29, 2014

It appears that some mischievous soul with an adolescent sense of humour has produced a spoof local government bulletin apparently aimed at members of our sister union, the GMB. It’s dated 26 September and has the number P/20/14.

It’s quite a convincing spoof, particularly because the first page reports (factually) on the “proposals” given to the local government trade unions by the employers on 25 September (about which I have blogged beforemore than once).

However, the second page soon gives the game away!

“Some might see this as an attractive proposal,” it suggests, whilst conceding that “others might not.”

Apart from those who simply want to avoid further industrial action at all costs, there really isn’t anyone for whom these proposals could be described as “attractive” and there is no way that a respected and experienced union official would suggest any such thing.

The slapstick humour continues with the observation that there are “good points” as well as “bad points”. The “good points” may be visible from the point of view of the employers but it’s hard to see them from the point of view of the workers, bearing in mind that the proposals achieve;

Less moneyin 2014/15 than if we had accepted the employers’ first offer for everyone who earns more than £1,870.25 gross (i.e. before deductions) per month (£430.41 gross a week);

A pittance extra in 2014/15 for those earning less – barely enough to buy a round of drinks and much less than has been lost by those who took strike action on 10 July;

Coming nowhere near our objective of a flat rate increase of at least one pound an hour;

Failing to achieve the living wage for workers up to spine point 10.

The first punchline is the real killer though, having concluded that “our members should be able to decide whether these new proposals would be acceptable or not” the author (posing, unconvincingly as a senior GMB official) goes on to say, of strike action on 14 October, “we would obviously want to suspend that strike while our members have the opportunity to vote by secret postal ballot to decide to accept or reject.”

What makes the humour almost elegant here is that this wouldbe precisely what a decent negotiator would say if they had done a decent job and negotiated a new offer worthy of consideration – but of course, the employers’ “proposals” (which aren’t even yet a formal offer) fail in every way (and are arguably much worse than the bottom-loaded 1% one year deal we took strike action against – because it ties us in for eighteen months). In these circumstances, any experienced trade unionist would know only too well that suspending strike action to “consult” amounts to ending the dispute. No skilled negotiator would contemplate suggesting such a course of action knowing that what they had to offer was so far from what would be in the best interests of their members.

Although the comedian who posed as a trade union official to write this spoof says that the employers’ proposals are “completely new”that is only in the sense that someone who previously threatened to poke you in your right eye and now changes their mind and threatens to poke you in your left eye is making a “completely new”threat. GMB members didn’t strike for different reasons from the reasons that motivated members of UNISON (or UNITE) – all local government workers wanted a better deal, not a worse deal, which offers an insignificant increment to the lowest paid (taken not from the employers but from the rest of the membership) whilst tying us into a below inflation settlement for the next eighteen months.

Although much of the spoof bulletin is over the top and therefore unconvincing, there is a delicate irony to the way in which the author bemoans that the employers have withdrawn from the proposal because “one of the unions” wouldn’t call off the strike action in return for a such an appalling (non)”offer”. The author says he is “strongly supportive of trade union solidarity”. (That did make me laugh!)

I hope that colleagues in the GMB will get to the bottom of who wrote the spoof circular – and will make sure that comprehensive information is available before GMB stewards gather to consider the dispute on Thursday.

It appears
that some mischievous soul with an adolescent sense of humour has produced a spoof
local government bulletin apparently aimed at members of our sister union,
the GMB. It’s dated 26 September and has the number P/20/14.

It’s quite a
convincing spoof, particularly because the first page reports (factually) on
the “proposals” given to the local government trade unions by the employers on
25 September (about which I have blogged
beforemore
than once).

However, the
second page soon gives the game away!

“Some might see this as an attractive
proposal,” it
suggests, whilst conceding that “others
might not.”

Apart from
those who simply want to avoid further industrial action at all costs, there
really isn’t anyone for whom these proposals could be described as “attractive” and there is no way that a respected and experienced union official would suggest any such thing.

The
slapstick humour continues with the observation that there are “good points” as well as “bad points”. The “good points” may be visible from the point of view of the
employers but it’s hard to see them from the point of view of the workers,
bearing in mind that the proposals achieve;

Less moneyin 2014/15 than if we had
accepted the employers’ first offer for everyone who earns more than
£1,870.25 gross (i.e. before deductions) per month (£430.41 gross a week);

A pittance extra in 2014/15 for those earning less – barely enough
to buy a round of drinks and much less than has been lost by
those who took strike action on 10 July;

Coming nowhere near our objective of a flat rate
increase of at least one pound an hour;

Failing to achieve the living wage for workers up to spine point
10.

The first
punchline is the real killer though, having concluded that “our members should be able to decide whether these new proposals would
be acceptable or not” the author (posing, unconvincingly as a senior GMB
official) goes on to say, of strike action on 14 October, “we would obviously want to suspend that strike while our members have
the opportunity to vote by secret postal ballot to decide to accept or reject.”

What makes the
humour almost elegant here is that this would
be precisely what a decent negotiator would say if they had done a decent job
and negotiated a new offer worthy of consideration – but of course, the
employers’ “proposals” (which aren’t even yet a formal offer) fail in every way
(and are arguably much worse than the bottom-loaded 1% one year deal we took
strike action against – because it ties us in for eighteen months). In these
circumstances, any experienced trade unionist would know only too well that
suspending strike action to “consult” amounts to ending the dispute. No skilled
negotiator would contemplate suggesting such a course of action knowing that
what they had to offer was so far from what would be in the best interests of
their members.

Although the
comedian who posed as a trade union official to write this spoof says that the
employers’ proposals are “completely new”
that is only in the sense that someone who previously threatened to poke you in
your right eye and now changes their mind and threatens to poke you in your
left eye is making a “completely new”
threat. GMB members didn’t strike for different reasons from the reasons that
motivated members of UNISON (or UNITE) – all local government workers wanted a
better deal, not a worse deal, which offers an insignificant increment to the
lowest paid (taken not from the employers but from the rest of the membership)
whilst tying us into a below inflation settlement for the next eighteen months.

Although
much of the spoof bulletin is over the top and therefore unconvincing, there is
a delicate irony to the way in which the author bemoans that the employers have
withdrawn from the proposal because “one
of the unions” wouldn’t call off the strike action in return for a such an
appalling (non)”offer”. The author says he is “strongly supportive of trade union solidarity”. (That did make me
laugh!)

I hope that
colleagues in the GMB will get to the bottom of who wrote the spoof circular –
and will make sure that comprehensive information is available before GMB
stewards gather to consider the dispute on Thursday.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

In the previous post on this blog, I analysed the impact on local government workers’ pay in the current pay year of the “proposal” made by the employers’ side negotiators in the past week, and, comparing it with the previous pay offer (against we took strike action on 10 July), concluded that it offered the following;

·Less moneyin 2014/15 than if we had accepted the employers’ first offer for everyone who earns more than £1,870.25 gross (i.e. before deductions) per month (£430.41 gross a week);

·A pittance extra in 2014/15 for those earning less – barely enough to buy a round of drinks and much less than has been lost by those who took strike action on 10 July;

·Coming nowhere near our objective of a flat rate increase of at least one pound an hour;

·Failing to achieve the living wagefor workers up to spine point 10.

However, the “proposal” isn’t a single year pay offer, if it formed the basis of a settlement, we would be accepting that we would not receive a further pay increase until April 2016. Since we hadn’t made a pay claim for 2015/16, and hadn’t received any earlier offer, there is no benchmark against which to measure the post-April implications of the “proposal” in the same way as the implications up to 31 March can be compared with the previous (bottom loaded) 1% one year offer.

The most important question to ask about the “proposal” may be whether it could be said to “break” the Government’s 1% pay policy, given that the “headline” percentage increase appears to be 2.2%.

That question arises, of course, only because other questions do not arise.

There is no point asking “does this ‘proposal’ come anywhere near achieving the objectives of our claim?”

Because it doesn’t.

For the low paid, we sought to achieve the living wage of £7.65 per hour (£14,759 a year, for a full-time worker based upon a 37 hour week). The “proposal” leaves everyone on spine point 10 and below earning less than the living wage (set in October 2014) until at least April 2016.

There is no point asking “does this ‘proposal’ come anywhere near restoring the loss in real income which our members have suffered over the past five years?”

Because it doesn’t.

Look at the UNISON online pay calculator to see how much workers have lost at different points in the pay spine. A worker earning £12,435 (well below the living wage) is £2,248 a year worse off but is being offered only £1,065 to make up for this, with nothing more until April 2016. A worker earning £24,982 is £4,905 a year worse off but is being offered only £547.62 to make up for this, with nothing more until April 2016.

So, if there are people out there (perhaps some union officials, or employers’ representatives) who want to put a positive spin upon this entirely inadequate “proposal” their best bet will be to present this as a 2.2% pay rise rather than a 1% pay rise.

But it isn’t.

The previous blog post dealt with the fact that the new “proposal” is actually worth less than a 1% pay increase would have been in the current year to all workers above spine point 26, whilst offering a paltry few pounds extra to the lower paid over that period.

The appearance of a 2.2% increase in 2015/16 can only be achieved by sleight of hand, ignoring the fact that this is a two year deal and that the very worst we could have expected anyway, without any campaign or industrial action, would have been two successive 1% pay awards, which together would have been worth a combined 2.01% anyway.

Putting it at it its very best, a settlement on the basis of this “proposal” would be gambling away our opportunity to fight for a decent pay rise in 2015 (a year in which a General Election will be fought in large part on the issue of living standards) in return for an increase 0.19% larger than the worst we could otherwise have expected.

To put this into some sort of perspective, here is a comparison of the 2015/16 salaries at various points subject to the straightforward percentage increase element of the “proposal” with what those salaries would have been after two successive 1% increases;

Spine point

Annual salary in 2015/16 under the “proposal” £pa

Annual salary in 2015/16 based upon two 1% increases

Benefit of the “proposal” £pa

Monthly benefit of the “proposal”

Weekly benefit of the “proposal”

11

15,207.36

15,179.09

28.27

£2.36

54p

21

19,741.97

19,705.27

36.70

£3.06

70p

26

22,936.75

22,894.10

42.65

£3.55

82p

31

27,122.86

27,072.43

50.43

£4.20

97p

41

35,661.67

35,595.37

68.30

£5.69

£1.31

The worker on spine point 26 (who is, as readers of the last blog post will recollect, no better off in 2014/15 at all as a result of the “proposal” than they would have been if we had just meekly accepted 1% in the first place) is therefore being asked to forego the possibility of campaigning for fair pay in the year of a General Election in return for the princely sum of 82p a week before taxthan they would have got from the Government’s 1% pay policy.

The benefit to the lower paid is even more pitiable, whilst the slightly larger (though still tiny) increases at higher pay rates have to be offset against the financial loss which they will have suffered in 2014/15 from accepting a “proposal” which (for them) will have been even less generous than the original 1% offer.

It is incredible that any serious trade unionist would contemplate accepting a settlement based upon the employers’ “proposal”. If this is what some people think amounts to “breaking” a pay freeze then I strongly urge they never try to shatter an ice sculpture.

It is not just that this is not something for which it would be worth calling off strike action on 14 October – if the real reason for considering that is that some are not optimistic about the response on the day then I seriously question whether we wouldn’t be better just settling for the previous offer and keeping our options open in 2015.

Any trade union official who recommends a settlement based upon the employers’ “proposal” because they say it is a significant improvement on the previous 1% offer, or because they claim it breaks the pay freeze is either a charlatan or a fool (or possibly both, and an inebriate).

If we fight for fair pay and fail, then the employers “proposal” shows the sort of unfair pay which our members will doubtless have to put up with into the future – just as we have put up with the largest decline in our living standards in our working lives over the last five years because we have not been able to mobilise members to fight for more.

Local government workers who want a better standard of living need to gear up for strike action on Tuesday 14 October.

In the previous
post on this blog, I analysed the impact on local government workers’ pay
in the current pay year of the “proposal” made by the employers’ side
negotiators in the past week, and, comparing it with the previous pay offer
(against we took strike action on 10 July), concluded that it offered the
following;

·Less moneyin 2014/15 than if we had accepted the employers’ first offer for
everyone who earns more than £1,870.25 gross (i.e. before deductions) per month
(£430.41 gross a week);

·A pittance extra in 2014/15 for those
earning less – barely enough to buy a round of drinks and much less than has been
lost by those who took strike action on 10 July;

·Coming nowhere near our objective of
a flat rate increase of at least one pound an hour;

·Failing to achieve the living wage
for workers up to spine point 10.

However, the “proposal” isn’t a single year pay offer, if it
formed the basis of a settlement, we would be accepting that we would not
receive a further pay increase until April 2016. Since we hadn’t made a pay
claim for 2015/16, and hadn’t received any earlier offer, there is no benchmark
against which to measure the post-April implications of the “proposal” in the
same way as the implications up to 31 March can be compared with the previous
(bottom loaded) 1% one year offer.

The most important question to ask about the “proposal” may
be whether it could be said to “break” the Government’s 1% pay policy, given
that the “headline” percentage increase appears to be 2.2%.

That question arises, of course, only because other
questions do not arise.

There is no point asking “does this ‘proposal’ come anywhere
near achieving the objectives of our claim?”

Because it doesn’t.

For the low paid, we sought to achieve the living wage of
£7.65 per hour (£14,759 a year, for a full-time worker based upon a 37 hour
week). The “proposal” leaves everyone on spine point 10 and below earning less
than the living wage (set in October 2014) until at least April 2016.

There is no point asking “does this ‘proposal’ come anywhere
near restoring the loss in real income which our members have suffered over the
past five years?”

Because it doesn’t.

Look at the UNISON online pay
calculator to see how much workers have lost at different points in the pay
spine. A worker earning £12,435 (well below the living wage) is £2,248 a year
worse off but is being offered only £1,065 to make up for this, with nothing
more until April 2016. A worker earning £24,982 is £4,905 a year worse off but
is being offered only £547.62 to make up for this, with nothing more until
April 2016.

So, if there are people out there (perhaps some union
officials, or employers’ representatives) who want to put a positive spin upon
this entirely inadequate “proposal” their best bet will be to present this as a
2.2% pay rise rather than a 1% pay rise.

But it isn’t.

The previous
blog post dealt with the fact that the new “proposal” is actually worth less than a 1% pay increase would have
been in the current year to all workers above spine point 26, whilst offering a
paltry few pounds extra to the lower paid over that period.

The appearance of a 2.2% increase in 2015/16 can only be
achieved by sleight of hand, ignoring the fact that this is a two year deal and
that the very worst we could have expected anyway, without any campaign or
industrial action, would have been two successive 1% pay awards, which together
would have been worth a combined 2.01% anyway.

Putting it at it its very best, a settlement on the basis of
this “proposal” would be gambling away our opportunity to fight for a decent
pay rise in 2015 (a year in which a General Election will be fought in large
part on the issue of living standards) in return for an increase 0.19% larger
than the worst we could otherwise have expected.

To put this into some sort of perspective, here is a
comparison of the 2015/16 salaries at various points subject to the
straightforward percentage increase element of the “proposal” with what those
salaries would have been after two successive 1% increases;

Spine point

Annual salary in 2015/16 under the “proposal” £pa

Annual salary in 2015/16 based upon two 1% increases

Benefit of the “proposal” £pa

Monthly benefit of the “proposal”

Weekly benefit of the “proposal”

11

15,207.36

15,179.09

28.27

£2.36

54p

21

19,741.97

19,705.27

36.70

£3.06

70p

26

22,936.75

22,894.10

42.65

£3.55

82p

31

27,122.86

27,072.43

50.43

£4.20

97p

41

35,661.67

35,595.37

68.30

£5.69

£1.31

The worker on spine point 26 (who is, as readers of the last
blog post will recollect, no better off in 2014/15 at all as a result of
the “proposal” than they would have been if we had just meekly accepted 1% in
the first place) is therefore being asked to forego the possibility of
campaigning for fair pay in the year of a General Election in return for the
princely sum of 82p a week before tax
than they would have got from the Government’s 1% pay policy.

The benefit to the lower paid is even more pitiable, whilst
the slightly larger (though still tiny) increases at higher pay rates have to
be offset against the financial loss which they will have suffered in 2014/15
from accepting a “proposal” which (for them) will have been even less generous than the original 1%
offer.

It is incredible that any serious trade unionist would
contemplate accepting a settlement based upon the employers’ “proposal”. If this
is what some people think amounts to “breaking” a pay freeze then I strongly
urge they never try to shatter an ice sculpture.

It is not just that this is not something for which it would
be worth calling off strike action on 14 October – if the real reason for
considering that is that some are not optimistic about the response on the day
then I seriously question whether we wouldn’t be better just settling for the
previous offer and keeping our options open in 2015.

Any trade union official who recommends a settlement based
upon the employers’ “proposal” because they say it is a significant improvement
on the previous 1% offer, or because they claim it breaks the pay freeze is
either a charlatan or a fool (or possibly both, and an inebriate).

If we fight for fair pay and fail, then the employers “proposal”
shows the sort of unfair pay which our members will doubtless have to put up
with into the future – just as we have put up with the largest decline in our
living standards in our working lives over the last five years because we have
not been able to mobilise members to fight for more.

Local government workers who want a better standard of
living need to gear up for strike action on Tuesday 14 October.

We have the details of the “proposal” (not a formal offer) from the employers’ side in the national pay dispute covering local government workers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. This amounts to a two year pay settlement of 2.2%, paid nine months late (on 1 January 2015) with an unconsolidated lump sum paid in December 2014 (an unconsolidated lump sum is an amount of money paid separately from salary or wages which doesn’t increase your pay in the long run – it is taxable and would be paid pro rata for part time workers). The lump sum payments are more generous below spine point 10 (as was the original offer) - £325 from spine points 5 to 7, £150 on spine points 8 and 9, and £100 on spine points 10 and above.

This "proposal" isn't an offer - and UNISON's "National Joint Council" (NJC) Committee, representing the majority of all those trade unionists in dispute, has agreed that this is no basis to settle the dispute. However, there is a danger that other unions may find that their officials are trying to "sell" this dodgy deal to members - and that this may cause the fainthearted within UNISON to wobble. A brief look at this entirely unacceptable proposal indicates why no one who cares about the future of local government or its workforce would give this "proposal" any consideration whatsoever.

Since we started this dispute because we had made a single year pay claim (for a flat rate increase to bring the lowest paid outside London up to the rate of the living wage), and since the employers responded with a single year offer of a 1% pay rise, with an element of “bottom loading” to keep the lowest paid above the rate of the statutory minimum wage, it is worth looking, first of all, at what this “proposal” means for that single year (1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015).

The increase we would receive under this “proposal” in the period up to 31 March 2015 has two elements, the three months worth of a 2.2% pay rise from 1 January, plus the unconsolidated lump sum. It is somewhat disingenuous to add an unconsolidated lump sum to a delayed percentage increase (as they are incommensurable, it’s like adding apples to bananas). However since that is what the table which has been circulated to UNISON branches does, it’s worth looking at what these figures mean in practice for how much money we will be paid in the year from 1 April 2014 (which is the period over which we embarked upon an industrial dispute and took strike action).

At spine point 26, the value of a £100 lump sum (on the national pay spine) is equivalent to 0.45% of annual salary, which if added to the annualised value of a 2.2% offer paid nine months late (0.55%) gives a “cash value” to the increment in income over the twelve months from our settlement date of 1 April 2014 of 1% of salary.

So outside London, the employers’ “proposal” (when compared to their previous offer against which we took strike action) delivers nothing in the current pay year for someone on spine point 26, somethingfor people below that point and worse than nothing for people above that point.

On the Inner London Pay spine the equivalent spine point (above which the employer’s “proposals” actually deliver less in cash terms in the current year than the 1% against which we have been taking strike action) falls between spine points 20 and 21 (in outer London the same point falls between spine points 23 and 24). Therefore everything I say here about how utterly inadequate the employers’ proposal is applies with added force in Greater London.

Outside London, in authorities which apply only the national pay spine, the following table shows, at various points on the pay spine, how much more or less the employers’ new “proposal” offers between 1 April 2014 and 31 March 2015 when compared to the 1% pay offer (with more for spine points 5 to 10) against which we took strike action;

Spine point

Value of previous offer £pa

Value of “proposal” £pa

Gain/(loss) £pa

Gain (loss) per month

Gain/(loss) per week

5

580

591

+11

92p

21p

10

175

182

+7

58p

13p

21

193

207

+14

£1.17

27p

26

224

224

0

0

0

31

265

246

(-19)

(-£1.58)

(-36p)

41

349

292

(-57)

(-£4,75)

(-£1.09)

As you can see, the employers’ “proposal” offers an extra pittance to the lower paid at the expense of offering less to workers paid at or above spine point 26 (the bottom of scale 6). This is obfuscated to some extent in the documents circulated by the device of offering to settle next year’s pay claim at the same time – so it is worth stressing just how tiny the benefit to the lowest paid from this “proposal” really is. Across the whole year, the lowest paid benefit by a few pounds before tax – after tax perhaps enough to afford a small round of drinks to toast the skill of our negotiators?

Those who took strike action may also be interested in how the improvement (if there is one for them) in the money they will receive from their employer in the current pay yearcompares with the deduction they experienced for taking strike action on 10 July. There is no point making this comparison for those on spine points 26 and above – since they will all be worse off than if we had accepted the employer’s original offer.

This table compares the amount by which workers at various points on the bottom half of the pay spine benefit from the employers’ “proposal” (compared to the previous offer) with how much it will have cost them to have taken strike action for a day, depending upon whether their employers made deductions at the rate of 1/365th or 1/260th of annual salary;

Spine point

Gain

Deduction at 1/365th

Deduction at 1/260th

5

£11

£34

£48

10

£7

£38

£54

21

£14

£53

£74

The skilled negotiators who have drawn this dramatic new “proposal” from the employers will therefore have achieved (if they could persuade members to accept a settlement on this basis);

·Less moneyin 2014/15 than if we had accepted the employers’ first offer for everyone who earns more than £1,870.25 gross (i.e. before deductions) per month (£430.41 gross a week);

·A pittance extra in 2014/15 for those earning less – barely enough to buy a round of drinks and much less than has been lost by those who took strike action on 10 July;

·Coming nowhere near our objective of a flat rate increase of at least one pound an hour;

·Failing to achieve the living wagefor workers up to spine point 10.

Now it might be objected, by one of these skilled negotiators (let’s perhaps refer to him as BS?) that this analysis of just how pathetic it would be to recommend settling our pay dispute for this miserable “proposal” because of its impact in the current pay year, fails to take account of the longer term impact of the 2.2% pay increase from 1 January into the future.

I’ll look further at that argument in the next blog post, but it is entirely reasonable to look at the impact of a pay proposal over one year, because if we had accepted the employers’ original offer (against which we took strike action) we could have lodged a new claim for a further increase from 1 April 2015.

The most important conclusion to draw from all this analysis is that we need to step up preparations for strike action on 14 October 2014!